Pitchfork

In interviews, Jim James has said he doesn't want My Morning Jacket to remain creatively static, or become victim to the sort of bland-ification that befalls so many lesser groups that emerge through the jam and festival circuits. He's lived up to his end of the bargain: A clear and wonderful upward trajectory can be easily mapped over the band's first decade, as their fanbase and creative scope expanded with the crowds and lineups at Bonnaroo, a festival with which they'll forever be linked.

As they grew, they pared back indulgences (like the thick song lengths of It Still Moves) and allowed fresh ideas to infiltrate (the first third of Z) while retaining a sonic identity distinctive enough to influence legions of worthy followers. Their 2005 psych/prog wonder Z-- not so much their Yankee Hotel Foxtrot as their The Soft Bulletin-- broke sharply with the Muscle Shoals might of Moves, but 2006's wonderful live double-album Okonokos re-framed and affirmed My Morning Jacket as what fans and critics had been saying since At Dawn: This is one of America's preeminent contemporary rock bands.

My Morning Jacket's latest album, Evil Urges, ends the mean streak the band's been on since 2000, and threatens to squander some of the widespread goodwill they've been steadily building along the way. There are few fiery guitar freakouts, folk-influenced melodies, soaring space-rock bridges, or psychedelic flourishes here; instead, the empty space is mostly filled with serviceable falsetto funk and glassy-eyed soft rock. Worse still is the band's decision to ignore the perfect past incarnations of James' Orbisonian tenor-- easily MMJ's most appealing component and one of the more breathtaking instruments in modern rock. At best, his voice is sorely underutilized here; at worst, it's mangled beyond recognition. After listening to Urges, I wonder if My Morning Jacket might just be satisfied following in the footsteps of labelmates Dave Matthews Band: nestling into a comfortable niche and aiming for the Starbucks carousel with rootsy New Age romanticism.

Any discussion of this record has to start with the eye-poppingly annoying "Highly Suspicious", a loud thud ending any chance Urges had to match the group's previous records. An attempt to merge the band's penchant for live quirkiness with James' long-simmering Prince fixation, the track sounds like My Morning Jacket's version of a Phish novelty. The song reduces James' voice to a grating squeak, which cowers in the presence of the obnoxious, caricatured chorus. Its libertarian undertones ("Wasting all your time on drama/ Could be solving real crime") sound like they could stretch to resonate with the hydroponic crowd or those who fret about warrantless wiretapping, but I cringe thinking of an entire amphitheatre singing along to "peanut-butter pudding surprise" unless they're at a Ween show.

At the moment, even a not-very-political band like My Morning Jacket can't resist using their biggest stage yet for a bit of message-driven oratory. James has said, "Evil Urges is about how all of these things that you've been told are evil really aren't, unless they're actually hurting something or somebody." Cool, but the title track, a lighter version of "Suspicious", neuters a righteous sentiment by burying it underneath a jammy funk pastiche. The simultaneously effortless and calculated "I'm Amazed" is breezy and naïve enough to trigger the unconscious sing-along reflex, but the refrain ("Where's the justice?") is ambiguous. Similarly, "Look at You" wastes a perfectly good pedal-steel on a goofy hybrid of the sensual and civic, praising "a fine citizen" as "such a glowing example of peace and glory," as if James were a state senator awarding citations to volunteers. "Sec Walkin'"s refrain of "demon eyes are watchin' everywhere" may address his existential angst at omnipresent security, but the song's Quaalude-smooth soul vibe-- for real, it's a Grover Washington sax solo away from the PA system at Von Maur-- make it seem more like he's content to just keep on truckin'.

Soft rock isn't an irredeemable genre category, and there are some pretty good singles that have been tagged with it. James and his band have professed their affection for such sensitivity in the past, on tracks like "I Will Sing You Songs," which successfully filtered a timid emotional tone within the band's own style. Not so much here. In a live context, prefaced with an extended ironic monologue, "Make It With You" is fun. On record, several times over, from a singer more accustomed to disguising his elliptical, oft-nonsensical lyrics with grain-silos full of reverb, it's incongruous and awkward. "Thank You Too!", with syrupy strings courtesy of arranger-to-the-stars David Campbell, is readymade for the bride and groom's slow dance (save the line "you really brought out the naked part"). The strings trill, dramatically rising and falling on the loner's fantasy "Librarian", as James quietly crushes on, and quietly stalks, the female behind the desk, turned on by her listening to "Karen of the Carpenters" on AM radio. It sounds like a very well-produced Dan Fogelberg song, until James drops "interweb" on us like a sack of dirty socks. Thankfully, there's no couplet about him texting her on his "Crackberry" lol.

Still, James' tender side also leads to Urges' best moments, which bookend the album. Nicely sequenced after the title track at the start of the record, "Touch Me I'm Going to Scream, Pt. 1" is the perfect sequel to Z's sly "It Beats 4 U", down to the songs' similarly insistent, live/synthetic drum patter, and the way they isolate James' voice in a chilly emotional purgatory, only to be cracked with passion: "I need a human by my side, untied" is vulnerability done right. James is smart enough to know when he's got something good, and he ends Urges with an eight-and-a-half minute dark disco reprise of "Touch Me", slowly taking shape as the solemn, steady "Smokin' From Shootin'" fades out. With its patient, synthetic gleam slithering around James' lusty hoodoo, "Touch Me, Pt. 2" is My Morning Jacket's Moroder moment, bringing a highly frustrating record to a close with the line "Oh, this feeling is wonderful/ Don't turn it off." If it hadn't been such an exhausting ride to get there, I might not want to.